In Search Of ...

 Two from Scandinavia:

COMPARTMENT NO. 6 (A-minus) - Juho Kuosmanen -- finally following up the winsome story "The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki" -- produces another pairing, this time a Finnish woman traveling from her recent home in Moscow and sharing a train compartment with a wild Russian as they head to a town near the Arctic Circle. Here he and Andris Feldmanis adopt a novel by Rosa Liksom.

It focuses on Laura (though I don't remember the character's name being used), played by Seidi Haarla (who resembles a young Jennifer Saunders), who had been shacking up with Irina (Dinara Drukarova), an older woman in Moscow apparently known for her penchant for nomadic female "lodgers" who come and go with regularity from her bed. Laura will slowly realize that this separation isn't really temporary as she'd hoped (Irina bailed on the trip at the last minute).

Instead, she is distracted by Lhoja (Yuriy Borisov), a boorish hard-drinking miner who is headed to the same town where Laura wants to visit some coastal petroglyphs. Kuosmanen shoots half the film on the train, mostly in the cramped compartment, but Lhoja takes Laura on a few jaunts during stopovers, and she grows to enjoy the mindless fun. Lhoja evolves from downright menacing to borderline charming and deserving of a hug.

Haarla has a wide, expressive face and an impressive emotional range. Kuosmanen's visual style is rapturous. He finds beauty all along the rails, and he celebrates the smidgens of growth that Laura experiences on her rather quixotic and subconsciously therapeutic hero's journey. No shot is wasted in an efficient and moving narrative. 

MEMORIA (C+) - Meh. Tilda Swinton is fascinating to watch for more than two hours, but this film falls short of profundity while straining the patience of viewers with its static shots and lazy narrative. Swinton plays Jessica, a Scot traveling in Colombia, who is awakened one night by an unusual sound, a thoongg that leaves her discombobulated. 

Jessica spends the rest of the film trying to track down the origin of the sound, which eventually starts dogging her (and apparently only her), including during a restaurant outing with her sister. She finds a sound engineer who is able to approximate and replicate the noise -- for all the good it does her. 

This new-agey search for cosmic meaning comes from the mind and camera of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a Thai filmmaker best known for the indie darling "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives," which didn't seem compelling enough to seek out a decade ago. Like the Taiwanese master Tsai Ming-Liang, Weerasethakul is partial to long static shots where little or nothing happens. In Tsai's films, those excruciatingly long takes capture organic human behavior and lead to true insights; but in "Memoria," it just feels like the director is simply dragging things out -- a quarter past two hours, in fact.

It helps to have Tilda Swinton in nearly every frame. As usual, she is fascinating to watch, especially her negligible reactions to the events around her. Unfortunately, there's little payoff from the story. Especially ho-hum is the out-of-left-field ending, which feels like a cheat.

BONUS TRACK

Somehow, "Compartment No. 6" makes Roxy Music's "Love Is the Drug" sound fresh and urgent as it plays over the striking, colorful opening credits. Close your eyes and lend it an unbiased ear.